Anyway, this might make you think PE Obama has more humanity than you give hime credit for:

[from Newsweek via Politico]

When Obama was preparing for debates during the Democratic primaries, he was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective.'"

Glad you caught the link back to the 2004 strip. I really wanted to have that in there because that is one of my personal fave strips of the entire Soxaholix oeuvre.

Alex is a really good sport for not only inviting the characters into his Yankee blog, but also allowing them to bust his balls at the same time.

I love to poke fun at the Yankees and their fans but when it comes down to it we do have so much in common and the rancor can and should be fun.

The optimist in me is hoping we'll see something similar in politics with the election of Obama.

I think I've wrote of this before, but while I may disagree with any given President's policy, I do very much respect the office and the man.

So you won't see any of the BushChimpHitlerHeMustDie kind of stuff from me during the next 4 years of the sort I've seen repeatedly directed at Bush over the past 8 years.

And now that the BushChimpHitlerHeMustDie crowd has their guy in, I hope we can go back to being more civil about how we choose to express our disagreement with a President/party and the policies thereof.

I was just going to say "nice strip," but jeezus h.: And now that the BushChimpHitlerHeMustDie crowd has their guy in, I hope we can go back to being more civil about how we choose to express our disagreement with a President/party and the policies thereof. Give me a frackin break. The sad thing is I think you actually believe this.
We will very soon be going back to some equivalent of Rush's 1990s "Day 2,186 of 'America Under Siege'. Yes, let's return to civility, the kind of civility we saw during the Clinton years, or better yet, the kind we saw on McCain & Palin's campaign trail.

And Billy, although the Republicans were indeed vicious to Clinton, it was pretty much the typical, partisan crap mixed in with "don't get hummers from your intern" shit.

I'm not a huge W. fan, but in my lifetime, I've never heard such vitriol against a sitting prez. "He's Hilter"? "He planned the 9-11 attacks"? That kind of nonsense is pretty unprecedented, even among partisan a-holes.

Obama is now my president. I'll support him as such (with vigorous dissent when required).

Hey Bob, perhaps then you weren't alive during the Clinton years. How about, "He and his wife killed Vince Foster and have a body count a mile long," or "He's an illegitimate president," or more recently, "9/11 was Clinton's fault." Come on -- my point is, the behavior towards Bush was not unique. Clinton got his fair share. Reagan did too. There's no glorious civility for us to "go back" to.

For me, and perhaps I'm way off, I always felt like the Clinton vitriol was limited to the more fringe groups.

I mean I didn't see anyone on The View or a similar mainstream show suggesting that Hillary killed Vince Foster.

But I did see Rosie O'Donnell insist that "steel doesn't melt so 9-11 was in inside job" on The View and everyone just sat there.

Hell, I even started to see BushChimpHitler stuff on Entertainment Tonight of all places.

But let's take it out of the realm of celebrity and just down to regular folks like us.

I never hated Clinton. Disappointed with him, yes, hate, no. And I never stopped being friends with someone who supported Clinton or called them stupid or any other derogatory stuff. And I certainly didn't uproot their political yard signs and egg their house.

But I've experienced all of the above while Bush was CinC.

Of course, to be fair, maybe the egging was a Yankees fan anti Red Sox thing and not a BushChimpHitler thing. :)

In either case, I'm looking forward, seriously, to "change," and I'm going to give the skinny guy the benefit of the doubt and remain optimistic that the Obama Admin will be one of the best ever.

@Bob - I don't necessarily disagree, but I think there's something missing there. While the anti-Bush crowd certainly lost their minds at times, it isn't like they were operating in a vacuum. Florida in 2000 left many raw nerves. The 2002 campaign, using 9/11 as cudgel for political gains wasn't exactly gentlemanly. In the run-up to the Iraq war, if you were against the war, you were painted as wanting Americans killed by terrorists.

My greatest hope is that the grownups get the keys back, and vigorous exchanges of ideas comes back into style. I think the right guy won for that to happen but damn, what a difficult job to have, especially now.

Going back to what I said, among "normal" people like us, I don't think anything the Bush Admin did or didn't do justifies taking it out on me personally and others who weren't among the BushChimpHitler crowd, but that is what I got a lot of first hand and I know plenty of others who did too. (And I'm not talking about right wing fanatics, but just normal people who lean conservative.)

To me that was different than anything I ever experience before. And I'm an old fart, so I've been through quite a few election cycles and, frankly, as an Independent, have supported candidates for both parties over the years.

Megan McArdle put is succinctly in a post this morning: "The election of the President of the United States not a sports match, or a schoolyard battle for who's the biggest, meanest bully on the block."

I always thought of politics as fun during the 70, 80s and 90s and enjoyed the back and forth and disagreements over policy etc.

But the past 6 years or so it no longer felt fun but just nasty and sometimes psychotic.

h.b., you might be interested to read The Big Sort by Bill Bishop. It's an interesting look into how our ability to move more freely means that we're quickly segregating ourselves to keep the opinions of those around us more like-minded and how that's a bad thing.

Its thesis underlies a lot of what it seems you're trying to describe.

I know what you mean HB. I ran a listserv for about 10 years that was just me and about 15 friends debating the issues, passing around crude links our wives wouldn't approve of, etc. I had to shut it down this summer because the vitriol was so out of control. I drifted a little left (from libertarian who leans conservative to libertarian who leans liberal) and my so called friends simply couldn't deal with it. We couldn't get 10 emails into any issue without it becoming socialist this and communist that. It was kind of sad as we were all college friends and there was simply no ability to debate without getting over emotional. I finally just shut the list down and several of the people I had been friends with for 15+ years haven't spoken to me since.

I switched from conservative to liberal in '99 and '00. I experienced a lot of things that changed my values. So, maybe it was the fervor of the recently converted, but I felt enraged on a personal level after the 2000 election finally concluded.

I felt enraged on a personal level when I was told that not agreeing with Bush meant I was unpatriotic/not a real American/a friend of terrorists.

Although I had an extreme dislike for Clinton from his innaurguration onward (I was, and to extent still am, a fan of GHWB), I never felt it was personal. It was all policy-based, "Well, hell, I'd do things a lot differently." Even with the BJ and the subsequent lying, it never felt personal.

I'm not sure I can explain adequately why it never felt personal but it didn't.

To bring it to the now, I disliked McCain and even though I did not live in "Real America," that never felt personal, either. Maybe it was because the keystone to Bush's campaigns was moral values that made it feel less about policy.

I'm trying to be gracious after having voted for a winning candidate for the first time ever (Bush, Dole, Gore (err, actually Nader), Kerry, and now Obama). I'm resisting the urge to send "In Sympathy" cards to the hard-core conservatives I know, even though they continued to blame liberals for the downfall of America all through the Bush Administration.

In a lot of ways, how I feel now feels similar to how I felt at the end of October 2004 with regards to Yankees fans.

I think Soulie's onto something. imho, the 2000 election was stolen, and that changed the dynamic. On the bright side, I have encountered a lot of people, in person and via various media outlets who have said they never had "skin in the game", so to speak, but Obama's election has made them look at the power structure in a new light.

I suspect in the end that President Obama will govern a lot closer to the middle than to the left.

It's going to be interesting (and I'll admit I will take some amusement in it) to see the BushChimpHitler crowd go berserk when he does.

We are a moderate people, neither way right nor way left.

And its the Independents who have decided every recent election.

Sometimes they want to reject the right and swing slightly to the left, other times it's just the opposite.

Which is why I generally think it's kind of fun.

And why the treating of everything like a partisan nut job is pretty naive.

To stop talking to someone because of a different political belief or to assume somebody is stupid because they don't take your exact same position on something just leaves me perplexed.

And again, this goes back to the Red Sox / Yankees thing. I love to have fun with it, but I don't take it that seriously. I like Yankees fans and enjoy the back and forth. (Well, I could do without some of the mouth breathing trolls that appear here from time to time.)

Like Lou Gorman would say, tomorrow the sun will rise and I'll eat lunch.

I think some of the bitter dislike for the bush administration stems from the fact that a lot of people felt duped and anger is a natural response to that. Call it what you will, but I believe people want to be led - want to feel like someone is in charge and has a strong sense of what's going on. And when they sense their leader is maybe not even as smart as they are and turns out not to be even very good at lying, it sets off fear and a feeling of having been conned.

I think he's been a terrible president, but would love to go sit in a bar with him for a few.

In 2001 the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and CNN went down to Florida and spent 6 months counting every single rejected ballot in every county. They concluded that if the recount stopped by the Supreme Court "had proceeded under the standard that most local election officials said they would have used, the study found that Bush would have emerged with 493 more votes than Gore." President Bush won in 2000 - get over it and move on with your life.

Rather civil political discourse here. A rarity in today's blogosphere. Since we are all Sox lovers, we have common ground. HB continues to be the voice of reason amongst us. The vitriol against Bush has been unlike anything I witnessed in previous administrations and very destructive for the nation's unity. There was some heavy rancor during Reagan's 2nd term as he became older and more isolated from the public. W. has caught the worst shitstorm of any pres since Nixon. Only history will tell if it's deserved. Harry Truman left office with similar approval numbers and now he is remembered quite fondly. We are all entitled to our opinions but some are so cocksure about how W. ruined the world. We are all mushrooms here. Big heads, shorts stalks, and fed bullshit. It's never been harder to recognize the truth and keep an open mind as we are bombarded with so much information. Never forget that no matter how convinced you are, you just may be wrong. How many times in life have you discovered absolute truths to be utterly false? Be wary, cautious, and ever hopeful. BHO is our new president. Like it or not. True Americans get behind their leaders and know that the office is bigger than than man. I didn't vote for him but I hope he turns out to be what his most ardent supporters think he is. As a proud conservative American citizen, the new president will have my support.

out here in mostly liberal land, I've been shielded by some of the vitriol until I turn on the tube or look for it on the interwebs. but Cal's prop 8 - gay marriage is now unconstitutional - really brought out the extremes. many "sanctimonious" church goers cursing and spitting at those on the other side. it got really ugly and we're only 50 miles from SF. It wasn't policy - it was pure bible vs. the rest. nothing like amending the constitution (state) to take away the civil rights of a group of people...

anyway - Youk was robbed. What three errors??!!! What else did he have to do?

From the article "Marriage is for White People" in the Washington Post, March 26, 2006: "In the period between 1970 and 2001, the overall marriage rate in the United States declined by 17 percent; but for blacks, it fell by 34 percent. Such statistics have caused Howard University relationship therapist Audrey Chapman to point out that African Americans are the most uncoupled people in the country." So it seems that African Americans, at least a statistically significant portion compared to whites, might be against marriage in general, not just gay marriage.

yeah - we talked a lot about that dual edge sword around here - ie. it will be great when BO is elected but it could defeat Prop 8...we saw that coming. I wasn't generalizing to the whole state but to our little county. Latinos weren't out too much in protest but the classic christians were which defeated in rational dialogue over the issue.

From an outsider’s point of view, George W just seemed so stupid and dangerous and I guess entitled. There was also a lingering suspicion outside of the US that the white majority would not, in the end, bring themselves to vote for Obama. Well they did and you lot (conservative and liberal alike) should, I reckon, be very proud. Also, he is the finest orator in the WH since JFK. As mrs sdu said: I could listen to that man read the telephone book. McCain’s gracious concession and W’s kind word also warmed the heart.

Oh, and the hate cut both ways. We have friends who were living in liberal,leafy Hanover, New Hampshire in the aftermath of 9/11 (he grew up in Iowa; she in England). They didn't put up a flag outside their house; they didn't agree with a lot of people at dinner parties. They got the 'anti-American' hate.

I'm sure some classic, white, Christian Coalition types were part of the mix, but they weren't not nearly enough on their own...

I heard a quote on the radio this morning from an African-American woman addressing the fact that people are going down this path: "Why is it that black people are 13% of the population, but are always 100% of the problem?"

Good point. I know that's not what you're saying, but that should be kept in mind when we jump to blaming this on non-whites... A large majority of the pro-Prop 8 voters were white.

I see the same data -- you're right. I was saying that a majority of the Yes on Prop 8 votes were cast by white people, which is true, but beside the point. If white people had their say, this would have gone down, barely.

I agree about Obama -- even though he came out against Prop 8, the Yes on 8 people were able to use his words in their advertising, which I'm sure helped. In my opinion he's bad on this issue. He plays it politically safe, which he does on most issues -- hopefully that won't be his downfall.